A historical romance fantasy with supernatural elements? Sign me up!
A main character who’s been unadopted three times and who can brew magical teas? Hm, interesting.
A mysterious male lead with some kind of unknown history? Meh. It’s kind of typical, but all right. Let’s give it a try.
I had to stop reading for my own sanity.
In full transparency, I started writing this reaction months ago, but let it linger since I really didn’t have much of an interest in the series. So to continue writing this, I went back and read it again. It’s only twelve chapters, I thought. Maybe I was too harsh last time.
Nope. I was right the first time.
There’s a complete lack of visual or narrative transitions, leading to a disjointed reading experience where the story fails to flow seamlessly from one scene or plot point to another. I never thought that I’d miss scene transitions so much. I don’t know if there’s a webtoon equivalent to B-roll, but that’s a huge part of what makes this webtoon so hard to follow. There are no establishing panels or secondary scenes to set up what will happen next. It feels like the main character is just dropped into each scene, and that disjointed storytelling happens all throughout the story.
It felt like I was playing hopscotch with the panels.
Characters appear literally out of nowhere or they suddenly have well-established relationships with each other. One example is a scene where Camellia is taking a short break in the garden. Suddenly, a shadow comes across her and a random, regally dressed woman appears in front of her.
Where the fuck did she come from? Yeah, sure, I guess you could argue her sudden appearance is the whole point of her character introduction, but this is where those transition panels I mentioned earlier would have helped.
In all fairness, there are two small vertical panels that, I’m guessing, are meant to show a short passage of time between when Camellia sits on the bench to rest and when the crow lady makes her appearance. But I don’t think they’re used appropriately. At least it doesn’t feel like they’re used properly.
(Go take a peek at Chapter 4 to fully understand what I mean)
If I were the layout editor, I would have wanted one panel of the calm, serene peace of the garden that Camellia finds herself in, which is suddenly blanketed by black in the next panel, then some crows flying in, then boom – a large full-page panel of the crow queen in all her aviary glory.
In another scene, Collin just barges into the kitchen. Don’t know who Collin is? Neither did I and that’s because he was never introduced. But suddenly, based on their dialogue, he and Camellia are really good friends. She helps Collin with a difficult patron, who returns the next day after challenging Camellia to brew her the best tea.
When the patron returns, they seat her in front of a barn, that just comes out of nowhere. It’s not so weird that there is a barn on the premises more so than there wasn’t any comic panels establishing the grounds of the tea garden, no explanation of what exactly this “tea garden” is comprised of, nothing.
Well, it turns out this rude, difficult customer is a queen. She’s not the crow queen from earlier, but someone completely different. Perhaps the queen of the country this manhwa is set in? Maybe. It’s cute that you think I have an answer to that because the story certainly doesn’t provide one.
Or at least it doesn’t provide one within the 12 episodes I read.
The one place that I can’t fault Tea Garden for lack of detail is on the male lead, Brandon. The reader doesn’t know much about the ML and that’s on purpose because we’re supposed to learn along with the protagonist. And okay, he’s a dark-haired, mysterious ML, and those types of leads are my weakness, so I might be biased.
This is the first time I’m this acutely aware of the lack of world-building in a webtoon. Twelve episodes in and the audience knows barely anything about the setting. I think the closest thing to world-building is the MC’s explanation of some of the ML’s rumors.
Final Verdict: Decline
I’m sorry but also not sorry to say I won’t be continuing this webtoon. The ML isn’t enough to keep me interested when the storytelling feels so disjointed.
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